I hope everyone enjoyed their St. Patricks Day. I made some really yummy dishes. Two of them are certainly blog-worthy. This is the dessert I served and if you love the flavor of coffee you can enjoy this cupcake year round. The only thing I did differently was I added some homemade chocolate buttercream around the top of the cupcake and put the whipped cream topping in the middle. I thought the chocolate addition would be a tasty added treat.

Topping

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard muffin tin with paper liners.

In a small saucepan, stir together the granulated sugar and ½ cup water. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Boil for 1 minute. Take off the heat and whisk in 1 tablespoon of instant espresso powder. Stir in the whiskey and let cool.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and brown sugar on medium high speed until fluffy, 2 – 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time mixing well and scraping the sides of the bowl after each addition. Turn the mixer to low and gradually add half the flour mixture, then the half and half and finally the rest of the flour mixture. Blend until almost all the flour is mixed in. Add the vanilla and mix. With a large spatula, finish mixing the batter.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared muffin cups. Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes and then spoon coffee whiskey mixture over cupcakes. Let cool completely for 30 minutes and then whip cream with 2 tsp of sugar to swirl on top.

Cream butter for a few minutes in a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed. Turn off the mixer. Sift 3 cups powdered sugar and cocoa into the mixing bowl. Turn your mixer on the lowest speed (so the dry ingredients do not blow everywhere) until the sugar and cocoa are absorbed by the butter. Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, salt, and milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes. If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add a little more sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add additional milk 1 tablespoon at a time.

I watch the Food Network show Cupcake Wars every week and I’ve always wanted to tackle making one of those filled cupcakes with a super yummy light buttercream on top and this past weekend I did just that. The result was a delicious chocolate cake stuffed with a strawberry compote and frosted with a strawberry buttercream. It was heaven on a plate and it was all gluten-free

Cupcake Ingredients:

1 c Bob’s Red Mill GF all purpose flour

1 c granulated sugar

1/3 c unsweetened cocoa

1/2 tsp fine powdered instant espresso

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp xanthan gum

pinch of fine sea salt or kosher salt

1 stick of unsalted butter melted and slightly cooled

2 large eggs at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp creme de cacao

1/2 c hot water

Preheat oven to 325F and line 12 cupcake tins with liners or spray cupcake pan with non-stick cooking spray. In a stand mixer using a paddle attachment mix flour, sugar, cocoa, espresso, salt, xanthan gum and baking soda. Add eggs, vanilla and creme de cacao to the melted butter and whisk with a fork. Pour butter mixture into dry ingredients and mix for one minute. Scrape down sides and pour in half of the hot water. Mix for one minute and then pour in remaining water and mix again for one minute. Fill cupcake tins about 2/3 full and then bake for 12 minutes. Rotate pan and then bake for 8-10 minutes more (toothpick should come out clean). Cool completely.

Strawberry Compote Ingredients:

1 c fresh strawberries, diced

4 T granulated sugar

1 T lemon juice

2 tsp cornstarch

Combine all ingredients in pan on the stove over medium high heat. Bring to a boil and then boil for 3 minutes stirring constantly. Remove from heat and let cool and then refrigerate.

Strawberry Buttercream Ingredients:

1 1/2 c fresh strawberries, rinsed, hulled and coarsley chopped

4 large egg whites

1 1/4 c granulated sugar

3 sticks unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons, at room temp

Puree strawberries in a food processor until completely smooth. Add the egg whites and sugar to the bowl of your stand mixer and set it over a pan of simmering water. Heat, whisking constantly until all the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is no longer grainy. Attach the bowl to your stand mixer and beat on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form (about 10 minutes). Reduce the mixer to medium-low and add the butter 2 tablespoons at a time. The frosting will look curdled, but just keep beating and it will come together. Scrape down sides and add strawberry puree. Beat until combined. Again, it may look curdled, but just keep beating.

Core out middle of cupcakes and fill with strawberry compote and then frost with strawberry buttercream.

Who watched the 100th episode of Cupcake Wars on Food Network? It was an amazing episode! They always have very creative bakers on this show combining lots of yummy cupcake flavors, but this episode was really special because for the first time ever a gluten-free cupcakery took home the prize!

Crave Bake Shop in Portland, Oregon has a reputation for making the best cupcakes, cookies and cinnamon rolls and they are ALL gluten-free. They ship all items overnight ($42 aprox.) and a dozen will run you about $39 so they are pricey if you have to have them shipped, but I’m dying to try some. The cupcakes available for shipping are limited, but they also have dinner rolls, garlic knots and scones too. Check out their website for more info.

So proud of how this cupcakery represented on Cupcake Wars…..way to go!

I’ve seen these on magazine covers around this time of year…you know, the cupcakes that are made to look like turkeys. This year I thought I would give it a try. I found this gluten-free yellow cake mix in the managers special section at my local Kroger for $1.00 so I decided to use it to make my cupcake batter.

These are the other ingredients I used to make my turkey cupcake: canned chocolate frosting, candy corn, reeses mini cups, a tube of black gel icing and a tube of white gel icing.

After letting my cupcakes get nice and cool we topped them all with frosting using a large ziploc bagged snipped at one corner to create a piping bag and then decorated our turkey gems.